Sunday, December 2, 2012

Native American Genetic Source is Located

Artist rendition of crossing Bering Strait.

Northern European populations ~ British,
Scandinavians, French and Eastern Europeans ~ descend from a mixture of two ancestral
populations, one of which is related to Native Americans. This genetic discovery
helps understanding of both Native American and Northern European ancestry,
while explaining genetic similarities among the very divergent groups.

According to Science Daily, quoting Nick Patterson,
first author of the report published in the November issue of Genetics
magazine:

"There is a genetic link between the paleolithic
population of Europe and modern Native Americans. The evidence is that the
population that crossed the Bering Strait from Siberia into the Americas more
than 15,000 years ago was likely related to the ancient population of
Europe."

One of these ancestral populations was the first
farming population of Europe, whose DNA lives on today in relatively unmixed
form in Sardinians and the people of the Basque Country, and in at least the
Druze population in the Middle East.

The other ancestral population is likely to have been
the initial hunter-gathering population of Europe. These two populations were
very different when they met. Today the hunter-gathering ancestral population
of Europe appears to have its closest affinity to people in far Northeastern
Siberia and Native Americans.

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Tides represent the high and low, the ebb and flow. They're the rhythm spanning millennia and an apt image for this blog as it seeks to provide accounts linking today with ages long past. New archaeological finds and scholarly speculations help us better understand our ancestors and this small planet we've shared. And the better we understand our forebears and their environs, the better we know ourselves.

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